A study led by a North Carolina State University researcher found that although there were steep learning losses in reading for elementary school students during the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person learning opportunities helped some of those students mitigate learning loss and accelerate gains in reading compared to online learners. Younger elementary students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, English learners and students with disabilities were particularly affected by the pandemic school closures.
“Online instruction was inevitable during the pandemic, but in-person schooling was an equalizer,” said the study’s lead author Jackie Relyea, assistant professor of education at NC State. “Even though kids in this large North Carolina school district who chose in-person instruction spent around two months in school during the pandemic, many of them made faster growth over time in reading than their peers who opted for fully remote instruction. This aligns with the evidence we’ve seen from summer learning loss.”
The study, published in the journal Reading and Writing, compared average reading gains for third, fourth and fifth graders in a single large school district in North Carolina on the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) Growth reading test, a computer test looking at students’ foundational reading skills, language and writing, vocabulary and text comprehension.
They compared students’ average scores at the beginning and end of the 2020-21 school year with students’ average gains made across the 2018-19 school year. During the pandemic, the district offered students the choice of returning to school, which allowed researchers to compare the impact of in-person versus online instruction.
“During the fall semester, students had 10 days in-person, while the rest of the semester was online, and in the spring, they came to school for almost 50 days,” Relyea said. “The other group was in fully remote instruction the entire time.”
During the pandemic, third, fourth and fifth graders made lower reading gains on average compared to students in the 2018-19 school year. The steepest declines by age were for third graders. During the pandemic, their average gain was less than half — at 48% — of average gains made by students in the 2018-19 school year, while fourth graders’ average was 65% of gains made by students in 2018-19, and fifth graders was 58%.
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